so, i thought i’d share something i’d whipped-up last year, amidst the utter (mostly political) system-upgrade chaos that happened at my Fortune50 job. i was confronted w/ the realization that many managers/leaders, rather than being appointed on merit, seemed to have been extracted whole from someone’s ass, & displaying talents to match. or as j. paul getty would say, “Manager?! That person’s no Manager–I wouldn’t let them Manage a gas-station”.
Managerial Analysis:
A Lead’s focus is on resolving the Issues, while the Secretary’s focus is on removing tickets from the Support Queue. Thus, a Lead drives the Issues List, while the Secretary is driven by it.
A Lead always works towards the underlying issues, striving to understand the process before assigning priority. A Secretary doesn’t mind not understanding the issues, & will assign priority with aplomb.
In this way, a Lead calculates lead-times & resources-needed by carefully considering their Team’s capacity & individual strengths. A Secretary instead assigns tasks to whomever is available, with aggressive lead-times by default.
Managerial Teamwork:
A Lead makes sure to spend time with the teammembers whose tasks are critical, & time-constrained. In this way they help pick up the slack, & know how to [defend] their Team’s performance from upper management scrutiny. When a Secretary does in fact [deign] to spend time with their Team, that time is spent asking for status, & wondering aloud (in team mtgs) why the dates are being missed.
A Lead will always support their team, knowing that w/o buy-in of their Project Team, nothing important can be done. The Secretary instead continually overrides their teams’ concerns, re-phrasing their issues into superficial ‘percentage-done’s, while always being first to take credit for any successes achieved.
A Lead is thus quick to compliment teammembers publicly… or if necessary, [correct] them privately. A Secretary does the opposite.
A Lead strives to be attentive to the job satisfaction of their Team, if not their [career] goals. Rotating teammembers’ tasks to keep them fresh, can be difficult for a Manager– tasks may take a little longer, & it’s harder to predict issue resolution. A Secretary cannot tolerate such risk, & will (gladly? obliviously?) let a teammember work the exact same task for years on end… until such teammember quits in disgust.
In this way, a Secretary hangs their Team out to dry, both disenfranchising them from the Project’s success, & in the end, spoiling their morale.
Managerial Strategy:
When you [question] a Lead, they will have reasons & a plan for overcoming the issues, always driving from the critical-path. The same [question] to a Secretary will result in a deluge of excuses.
A Lead will think hard before setting a date, & think even harder before missing it. A Secretary chooses dates casually, & misses them even more casually.
A Lead’s audience is the system; they want things to work. Thus they go to Upper Management rarely, & only then with specific issues & seeking buy-in & support. A Secretary’s primary audience is [upper Management] themselves, trying to ‘hob-nob’ with them as much as possible, [yet] striving to avoid accountability. They like to blame a lot.
A Manager is measured by the quality of the Team they create & retain. Kicking your ppl’s asses doesn’t work for very long, neither does excessively coddling them. The best Analysts *like* to be challenged, working on difficult tasks they have a reasonable chance to achieve.
…w/ apologies to the many truly excellent performers whose job-title is “Secretary”, who accomplish all the best of a Managerial Lead, but [must] stand by & watch their Boss gain all the accolades.
2:29 PM 6/13/2004
Tags: management